Exodus Chapter 7 verse 18 Holy Bible
And the fish that are in the river shall die, and the river shall become foul; and the Egyptians shall loathe to drink water from the river.
read chapter 7 in ASV
And the fish in the Nile will come to destruction, and the river will send up a bad smell, and the Egyptians will not be able, for disgust, to make use of the water of the Nile for drinking.
read chapter 7 in BBE
And the fish that is in the river shall die; and the river shall stink; and the Egyptians shall loathe to drink the water out of the river.
read chapter 7 in DARBY
And the fish that is in the river shall die, and the river shall stink; and the Egyptians shall loathe to drink of the water of the river.
read chapter 7 in KJV
And the fish that is in the river shall die, and the river shall be offensive in smell; and the Egyptians shall lothe to drink of the water of the river.
read chapter 7 in WBT
The fish that are in the river shall die, and the river shall become foul; and the Egyptians shall loathe to drink water from the river."'"
read chapter 7 in WEB
and the fish that `are' in the River die, and the River hath stank, and the Egyptians have been wearied of drinking waters from the River.'
read chapter 7 in YLT
Pulpit Commentary
Pulpit CommentaryVerse 18. - The fish... shall die. This would increase the greatness of the calamity, for the Egyptians lived to a very large extent upon fish (Birch, 'Egypt from the Earliest Times,' p. 45), which was taken in the Nile, in the canals, and the Lake Morris (Herod. 2:149). The river shall stink. As Keil and Delitzsch observe, "this seems to indicate putrefaction." The Egyptians shall loathe to drink. The expression is stronger in verse 24, where we find that "they could not drink." We may presume that at first, not supposing that the fluid could really be blood, they tried to drink it, took it into their mouths, and possibly swallowed some, but that very soon they found they could not continue to do so.
Ellicott's Commentary
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(18) The fish that is in the river shall die.--The natural discoloration of the Nile, whether by red earth or by Cryptogams and Infusoriae, has no pernicious effect at all upon the fish, nor is the water rendered by these discolorations at all unfit for use. The Nile naturally abounds with fish of various kinds; and though to Europeans they have, most of them, an insipid taste, yet, both in ancient and in modern times, the subsistence of the natives has been largely drawn from this source. It was a severe punishment to the Egyptians to be deprived of their fish supply. It was also implied contempt in regard of their religious worship, since at least three species of the Nile fish were sacred--the oxyrhineus, the lepidotus, and the phagrus, or eel. (Herod. ii. 72; Plut. De Ibid. et Osir. vii. 18, 22.)The river shall stink.--The Nile is said to have sometimes an offensive odour naturally; but the phenomenon is not marked, and can scarcely be that which is here alluded to, when the blood-like waters, laden with the bodies of putrid fish, caused a disgust and horror that were unspeakable.
